Practice Abstract - Research and innovation

How to improve a knowledge platform: Learning from and with end users

The impact of your TN is best indicated by the uptake of best practices, methodologies, training, and educational courses by end users such as farmers, foresters, and advisors. If your TN’s materials are stored on a knowledge platform, it is important to get to know its end users:

1. Assess your end users starting with defining their needs, context, expectations, motivations, and barriers.

2. Get a better understanding of how users experience the platform by using surveys, workshops, interviews, focus groups, or persona exercises.

3. Estimate the success and impact of your TN results through reflection exercises, consultations, and surveys during the project as well as a detailed evaluation afterwards.

4. Actively involve end users in the process of improving the platform.

5. Include a rating function to increase engagement and hold validation workshops to create ownership.

Measure your platform’s impact with good indicators that:

• are relevant to your project and its environment, specific to the objective, easy to interpret, realistic and feasible to collect (available at an acceptable cost); and

• allow for tracking a change over a time and regularly reviewing targets, specifying quantity, quality, and time (measurable and time bound).

Qualitative indicators include user-friendly access, a search engine, and automatic profiling and translation. An example for a quantitative indicator is the number of user-friendly functionalities.

In summary, at best co-create the knowledge platform together with the future users, regularly collect feedback from end users, and use this feedback to improve the platform.

Check EURAKNOS Deliverable 2.6 and the TN Explorer’s Guide for more info and indicators: https://euraknos.eu/deliverables

Source Project
EURAKNOS
Ongoing | 2019-2021
Main funding source
Horizon 2020 (EU Research and Innovation Programme)
Geographical location
Belgium
Project details

Project Keywords